[whpalmer4]

You say you want to be able to use it immediately — if by that you simply want to be able to enter items immediately, just tap the Quick Entry button that appears very early in start up. If you want it to start up and not do the sync, turn off Auto-Sync in your settings page, but you'll have to tap the Sync button to cause a sync when you want one.

On the Mac, there's an Attachment List window under the Windows menu which you can use to track down large attachments.

If you want to add emails without attachments, and don't mind losing the Original Message link, use OmniFocus' Mail processing feature on the Mac and forward the messages to the address you set up instead of using the Clip-o-tron. Won't work with HTML email, though. See "processing mail" in the Help.